Greetings, * Dennis Jacobfeuerborn (dennisml@xxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote: > I'm currently trying to understand how backups work. In the > documentation in section "25.2. File System Level Backup" it says that > filesystem level backups can only be made when the database if offline > yet pg_basebackup seems to do just that but works while the database is > online. Am I misunderstanding something here or does pg_basebackup use > some particular features of Postgres to accomplish this? A simple tar-based backup as discussed in 25.2 can only be done with the database off-line, but if you're wondering what pg_basebackup is doing under the covers then you should be reading through 25.3, which talks about the PostgreSQL WAL, how a backup can be taken in an online manner provided you retain the WAL that was created during the backup, how to restore a backup taken in that manner, etc. All that said, I don't recommend rolling your own backup solution for PG. There's a number of good ones out there, starting with pg_basebackup if you really just need something simple. Thanks, Stephen
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